Hillary competes with Geithner for competence nadir

posted at 9:16 am on March 7, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

What Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner does for the markets, Hillary Clinton does for diplomacy. Maybe Hillary should have kept the “overcharge” button instead of giving it to Sergei Lavrov, since whatever she’s getting paid as Secretary of State outstrips her value. Even Reuters can’t hide the embarrassment of Hillary On Parade.

Forget the fact that State can’t translate Russian. Hillary doesn’t understand history. She dropped this little gem on the European Parliament:

“I have never understood multiparty democracy.

“It is hard enough with two parties to come to any resolution, and I say this very respectfully, because I feel the same way about our own democracy, which has been around a lot longer than European democracy.”

The Greeks might beg to differ, and they’d have a point — since they invented the term democracy more than two thousand years ago. The Dutch had a republic before we did. And do diplomats regularly go to other countries to disparage the political systems of their hosts? In other words, Hillary managed to screw up history while insulting the Europeans on her first visit as our official top diplomat.

And how difficult is it to understand multiparty democracy, anyway? We have one on our northern border, for Pete’s sake, and they’ve been doing pretty well for as long as we have. I thought Hillary was supposed to be experienced at foreign affairs.

But Hillary wasn’t finished. Someone needs to get her some flashcards, stat:

One working lunch later with EU leaders, Clinton raised more eyebrows when she referred to EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who stood beside her, as “High Representative Solano.”

She also dubbed European Commission External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner as “Benito.”

I’ve been calling the Obama administration “amateur hour”, but that’s too kind. It’s the Gong Show, only with the media as the panelists, we keep seeing 10s instead of mallets hitting the gong. At least the Gong Show had a sick, train-wreck entertainment quality along with its embarrassing incompetence, and it was blessedly over in 30 minutes.

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Comments

I would love to know what Bill was doing on her Asian trip. Apparently his face was all over Asian TV along with hers. What did she promise the ChiComs for “investing” in our humongus debt?

Judging from her EU tour she must have been a dud in Asia, too. I guess we all forgot what an absolute mess she made of the White House in the Clinton years. I’ve always wanted to ask her if she was ever going to bring back all the furniture she took.

Cut the crap about Hillary being tired. I seriously doubt she flew to England coach, in a middle seat surrounded by a family with a crying baby. Hill-dog flies first-class in a private plane, where they serve alcohol, have nice chairs and real beds to sleep in. There is NO excuse to be tired.

True, you can pay to get the Ivy League “free” pass for an open door guarded by the elitist gatekeeper. Of itself, status is merely an expensive facade kept up for the monopoly on influence and power. However, the ivy on those brick walls hosts roaches and infestation.

Given the full array of their graduates, an IVY LEAGUE EDUCATION ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. It isn’t as though the Ivy League has a monopoly on libraries or on internet access or great thinkers or opportunity.

The Ivy League does not hold any monopoly on Rhodes Scholars, for instance. What you gain from thorough research is still the matter of thorough observational and deductive reasoning. The “proper” environment for that is not limited within those Ivy League walls. Therein, the Ivy League manufactures cheap imitations more often than not. It’s an established advertising gimmick already outdated to feign one institution’s monopoly on knowledge by virtue of status.

Insult every ally at every opportunity
Declare Cuba BFFE
Knife Israel in the back
Fund Palestinian terrorism
Throw Poland and Eastern Europe back to the wolves
Create jobs rebuilding the iron curtain
Obama roll over and Hillary bend over to Russian “real men”
Ask for an invitation to an Iranian beheading
Wave greetings to North Korean missiles over Alaska and Hawaii
…

Tiredness appeared to show Friday when she answered questions in front of 500 young Europeans at the European Parliament….

So fatigue is the new all-purpose excuse for these idiots screwing up their cabinet-level jobs? I guess the MSM has to say something, but that is freakin’ weak-o-la. God forbid they evaluate the new Administration’s performance on the merits and have to concede it sucks. I’m quite certain they never tried to cover for the Bush Administration in such a manner.

So fatigue is the new all-purpose excuse for these idiots screwing up their cabinet-level jobs? I guess the MSM has to say something, but that is freakin’ weak-o-la. God forbid they evaluate the new Administration’s performance on the merits and have to concede it sucks. I’m quite certain they never tried to cover for the Bush Administration in such a manner.

Blacksheep on March 9, 2009 at 1:10 PM

+1

In the private sector; “fatigue” is not a valid excuse for incompetence.

Obama, Biden, Clinton, Geithner would be fired at this point if they actually had to be held responsible for their incompetence.